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Dr. Waagen considers the picture in the south aisle of the Frauenkirche as one of the best works now possessed by his native city; it represents St. Gregory celebrating mass amid many other saints; but the men of Nürnberg seem most to value those in the Moritzkapelle, and which he painted in 1487 for the high altar of the Schusterkirche, at the expense of the family of Peringsdorfer.
The Dresden carpet is conspicuously inferior in finish and colour to that of Darmstadt, so much so that Waagen and others, who believe the former a replica, think a pupil or assistant may have been responsible for this and other details, which for some reason Holbein himself was unable to finish.
In pictures of everyday life he gave us Adrian Brouwer and David Teniers; in landscape, Everdingen, Ruisdael and Waterloo. "Thus was the art of painting in the Netherlands remodelled in every department," says Waagen in the concluding sentence of his memoir, "by the energies of a single great and gifted mind.
His well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the Venetian School. Dr Waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the Netherlands during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between the death of Jan van Eyck in 1440 and the birth of PETER PAUL RUBENS in 1577.
Both pictures were publicly exhibited in Rome, and by some people Sebastiano's was preferred to Raphael's. According to Waagen the whole composition was designed by Michelangelo, with whom Sebastiano had entered into the closest intimacy; and Kugler states that the group of Lazarus and those around him was actually drawn by the master.
It is interesting to compare these observations, so far as they refer to the realism which characterises Netherlandish painting, with those of Dr Waagen, who it will be seen explains it on the broader grounds of national temperament.
The influence exerted on the young painter by surroundings like these is exemplified in a note by Waagen: His love for the fantastic and pompous led him to choose that with the elephants carrying the candelabra; but his ardent imagination, ever directed to the dramatic, could not be contented with this.
These last productions are a calamity to his reputation; yet we may, perhaps, safely assert that since Rembrandt there has been no painter of such originality and power as Turner." Dr. Waagen says in his Treasury of Art in Great Britain: "No landscape painter has yet appeared with such versatility of talent.
Waagen are, 'a nun in the white robes of her order, nobly conceived and delicately coloured, in Lord Yarborough's collection; in Mr Harcourt's collection, 'her own portrait, still very youthful, delicate, charming, and clear; and in the collection of the late Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, 'another portrait of herself at an easel painting the Virgin and Child on wood, delicately conceived, clear in colour, and very careful.
Two other pictures of this class are singled out for description by Waagen as masterpieces. One is the Rape of Proserpine, at Blenheim, Pluto in his car, drawn by fiery brown steeds, is carrying off the goddess, who is struggling in his arms. The other is the Battle of the Amazons, in the Munich Gallery, which was painted by Rubens for Van der Geest.
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